WBEZ | Sierra Leonehttp://www.wbez.org/tags/sierra-leone
Latest from WBEZ Chicago Public RadioenEbola epidemic continueshttp://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2014-11-25/ebola-epidemic-continues-111158
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/AP620242088694.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>Although some in Liberia are now referring to Ebola in the past-tense, the epidemic looks likely to continue past its ninth month. Laurie Garrett just returned from Sierra Leone and Liberia. She&#39;ll give us an update on what the epidemic looks like now.</p><div class="storify"><iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="no" height="750" src="//storify.com/WBEZ/worldview-ebola-epidemic-hits-9th-month/embed?header=false&amp;border=false" width="100%"></iframe><script src="//storify.com/WBEZ/worldview-ebola-epidemic-hits-9th-month.js?header=false&border=false"></script><noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/WBEZ/worldview-ebola-epidemic-hits-9th-month" target="_blank">View the story "Worldview: Ebola epidemic continues" on Storify</a>]</noscript></div></p>Tue, 25 Nov 2014 11:33:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2014-11-25/ebola-epidemic-continues-111158Financial burden of Ebola falls to African diasporahttp://www.wbez.org/news/financial-burden-ebola-falls-african-diaspora-111031
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/Ebola shipping.JPG" alt="" /><p><p>Members of Chicago&rsquo;s West African diaspora say they are struggling under the pressure of supporting large extended families in Ebola-stricken countries, where the public health crisis has taken a <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/10/08/ebola-new-world-bank-group-study-forecasts-billions-in-economic-loss-if-epidemic-lasts-longer-spreads-in-west-africa">serious economic toll</a>. Some have turned to neighbors, government assistance programs and faith organizations for help -- not just to send back to their motherland, but to sustain their families in the U.S. during this period.</p><p>&ldquo;You know, to take care of five persons in America, at the same time to take care of more than 25 persons (in Africa), it&rsquo;s not easy,&rdquo; said David Young, &ldquo;and on a low income, it&rsquo;s terrible.&rdquo;</p><p>Young, a Liberian who came to the U.S. two years ago and was recently joined by his wife and three children, worries that his family might perish -- of starvation -- in Chicago&rsquo;s Chatham neighborhood on the South Side. The family receives free housing from the Chatham Fields Evangelical Lutheran Church, where Young is Music Director. Young says his take-home pay, about $1000 a month, is already low for a family that size. But lately, they&rsquo;ve had to make do with less, as he&rsquo;s been wiring about $600 montly back to his family in Liberia.</p><p>&ldquo;Because there&rsquo;s no work now in Liberia -- everything is shut down economically,&rdquo; Young explained, &ldquo;So, they tell me that they are not working.&rdquo;</p><p>The <a href="http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2014/09/17/000470435_20140917071539/Rendered/PDF/907480REVISED.pdf">World Bank </a>and <a href="http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp268458.pdf">other international aid groups</a> confirm those reports. People in Ebola-stricken countries, afraid of catching the often-fatal virus, are staying home to avoid human-to-human interaction. This has left many households without income.</p><p>&ldquo;I am telling you that almost everyday they make a call,&rdquo; Young said about his family in Liberia. &ldquo;They have to call and tell us no food, no this one, no this, no that. They are not working. There&rsquo;s no jobs.&rdquo;</p><p>The amount that Young feels obligated to wire abroad has left him desperate for help feeding his family here. Trying to get help, Young said he has attempted twice to qualify for food stamps in Illinois. He was denied because he&rsquo;s lived in the U.S. fewer than five years. Because of the nature of his work visa in the U.S., an R-1 temporary visa for religious workers, Young also faces restrictions on what type of additional work he may seek to augment his income.</p><p>Still, Young feels compelled to continue to reach into his household&rsquo;s meager resources to scrounge whatever they can for his network in Liberia. In a front room of his house, a large blue barrel sits, half-full with items like hand sanitizer, soap, toothpaste, disinfectants, shampoo, and rice. All are items one can find in Liberia, but Young says his sons there tell him that pantry staples and basic household cleaning products have shot up in price since the outbreak began.</p><p>&ldquo;If you ask for a bottle of Clorox right now, it&rsquo;s very expensive,&rdquo; said Young.</p><p>Just across the street from Young&rsquo;s house, at the Chatham Fields Evangelical Lutheran Church, Pastor Kenety Gee helps lead a congregation with many Liberians. He said the financial toll of supporting family back home has hit them all.</p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s really hard to look at the pictures, look at the stories, and ignore your family members,&rdquo; Gee said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s really, really hard, so you got to stretch yourself.&rdquo;</p><p>Gee said he&rsquo;s no exception: one of his sisters in Liberia has a successful wholesale business, and never required Gee&rsquo;s support. But with Liberia&rsquo;s economy on hold, things have changed.</p><p>&ldquo;I send them $300 every week. That&rsquo;s $1200 a month,&rdquo; said Gee. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s the kind of strain that is put on us here in the U.S.&rdquo;</p><p>The World Bank hasn&rsquo;t yet analyzed recent remittances to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Wiring services Western Union and Moneygram weren&rsquo;t able to share data. But people from all three communities share similar stories: that they&rsquo;re constantly transferring money, and that many have shifted away from shipping goods.</p><p>Artemus Gaye used to collect goods monthly to ship to Liberia. But his last 40-foot long container was sent in March. Since then, the business has dried up.</p><p>&ldquo;Who will you send it to now everyone has been quarantined, people are not moving around,&rdquo; said Gaye. &ldquo;The markets are very empty.&rdquo;</p><p>Today, Gaye&rsquo;s collecting protective medical gear and hospital supplies, which he hopes to ship in November. This isn&rsquo;t the usual stuff for this time of year. Normally, Gaye would be shipping Christmas presents. Still, he&rsquo;s optimistic that the market will be back to normal by the holiday</p><p>Gaye&rsquo;s encouraged by recent reports that Ebola is leveling off in Liberia.</p><p>&ldquo;We might be having a good Christmas season,&rdquo; said Gaye. &ldquo;You know, it&rsquo;ll be reflective, but at least people will be out there to do what they do best - interact with each other.&rdquo;</p><p>Many hope their family members in Africa will also be able to return, safely, to work. That could help ease finances for the diaspora in Chicago to celebrate the holidays, too.</p><p><em>Odette Yousef is WBEZ&rsquo;s North Side Bureau reporter. Follow her <a href="https://twitter.com/oyousef">@oyousef</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/WBEZoutloud">@WBEZoutloud</a>.</em></p></p>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 08:19:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/news/financial-burden-ebola-falls-african-diaspora-111031Worldview: Obama's trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, development in Sierra Leone and copycat architecturehttp://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2013-05-02/worldview-obamas-trip-mexico-and-costa-rica-development-sierra-leone
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/AP125662241522.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F90486563&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=false" width="100%"></iframe><script src="//storify.com/WBEZ/obama-s-trip-to-mexico-development-in-sierra-leone-1.js?header=false"></script><noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/WBEZ/obama-s-trip-to-mexico-development-in-sierra-leone-1" target="_blank">View the story "Worldview: Obama's trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, development in Sierra Leone and copycat architecture" on Storify</a>]</noscript></p></p>Thu, 02 May 2013 10:59:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2013-05-02/worldview-obamas-trip-mexico-and-costa-rica-development-sierra-leoneGlobal Activism: Pan African Rural Health and Social Services aids Africans in dire needhttp://www.wbez.org/series/global-activism/global-activism-pan-african-rural-health-and-social-services-aids-africans
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/PHReSS Main.JPG" alt="" /><p><p>Pan African Rural Health and Social Services <a href="http://africanhopeanddignity.org" target="_blank">(PRHeSS)</a> aids rural Africans in: maintaining clean drinking water; sanitary living conditions; poverty alleviation and opportunity through education. The group was founded by Chicago area physician Sam Kormoi and his wife, Mary. Dr. Kormoi pays close attention to his native Sierra Leone, a country devastated and traumatized by years of civil war. Dr. Kormoi, along with PRHeSS Board Director, Lesta Woods, will share stories about the people and communities they&#39;re helping to transform.</p><p><strong><em>This Saturday May 4th, 2013, PRHeSS will sponsor a <a href="http://africanhopeanddignity.org/images/walk-a-thon-flyer-2013-big.jpg" target="_blank">Walk-a-Thon</a> of doctors and nurses for food, clothing, medical and school supplies for rural Africans.</em></strong></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F90490217&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=false" width="100%"></iframe></p></p>Thu, 02 May 2013 09:27:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/series/global-activism/global-activism-pan-african-rural-health-and-social-services-aids-africansGlobal Activism: LemonAid Fund does development work in Sierra Leone http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-09-29/global-activism-lemonaid-fund-does-development-work-sierra-leone-92596
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/segment/photo/2011-September/2011-09-29/sierraleone1.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>In 1996, Dr. Nancy Peddle was working on her dissertation in war-torn Sierra Leone when she found herself in the middle of a bloody coup. As the violence mounted, Dr. Peddle was evacuated from the country, leaving behind close friends – many of whom lost their homes or were forced into hiding.</p><p>The struggle between the Revolutionary United Front and the national army - which penetrated the Western imagination through the 2006 movie <em>Blood Diamond</em> with Leonardo DiCaprio - ultimately claimed 50,000 lives. After witnessing the coup’s destructive violence, Dr. Peddle decided to transition from academics to action. She founded an organization called the <a href="http://www.lemonaidfund.org/" target="_blank">LemonAid Fund</a>, a deliberately optimistic endeavor aimed at improving the lives of Sierra Leone’s children.</p><p>Today, more than a decade later, the organization oversees a network of 16 schools, two foster care homes and ten libraries around the country, and focuses on children’s access to education. According to <a href="http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/sierraleone_statistics.html" target="_blank">UNICEF</a>, only 30 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls there continue their education into secondary school. We talk to Dr. Peddle and her colleague from Sierra Leone, Francess Browne, about their work on the ground.</p></p>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:41:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-09-29/global-activism-lemonaid-fund-does-development-work-sierra-leone-92596Worldview 9.29.11http://www.wbez.org/episode/worldview-92911
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/episode/images/2011-september/2011-09-29/lemonaid3.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>For our <a href="http://www.wbez.org/globalactivism" target="_blank"><em>Global Activism</em></a> segment,&nbsp; we catch up with Dr. Nancy Peddle and Francess Browne of the <a href="http://www.lemonaidfund.org/" target="_blank">LemonAid Fund</a>. For more than a decade now, they’ve worked to support children and families in Sierra Leone. The organization oversees a network of schools, foster care homes and libraries in the war-torn country, which has some of the worst child education statistics in the world.</p></p>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:34:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/episode/worldview-92911Looking through Lynsey Addario’s lens http://www.wbez.org/story/looking-through-lynsey-addario%E2%80%99s-lens-87401
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/story/photo/2011-June/2011-06-03/Lynsey Addario_Getty_John Moore.JPG" alt="" /><p><p>A lot of reporters like to say they focus on stories that would not otherwise be told, but in Lynsey Addario’s case it’s really true.</p><p>Addario, a photojournalist based in Delhi, India, works in places that are extremely dangerous and hard to reach - places like the Congo and Afghanistan, for instance - and while there, she documents the hardships of people whose suffering is often invisible to the outside world.</p><p>She also does so at great personal risk.</p><p>Recently Addario and three other <em>New York Times</em> reporters were <a href="../../story/foreign-news/2011-03-31/photographers-lybia-ordeal-youre-going-die-84577">taken prisoner in Libya</a>. Their ordeal included being bound, blindfolded, beaten, and in Addario’s case, groped by captors during the 6 days they were detained by forces loyal to the Libyan government.</p><p>In addition to photographing conflict zones, Addario often trains her lens on women in the developing world who are sometimes trapped inside the horror of their own lives.</p><p>In 2010 the MacArthur “Genius” Grant and Pulitzer Prize winning photographer traveled to Sierra Leone, which has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world. There, 1,033 women die for every 100,000 live births, and the photos Addario produced depict the horrific reality behind those numbers.</p><p>Addario described the work when she was in Chicago in May to speak at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women &amp; Gender in Arts and Media, where she is currently a fellow. The photos were published in <em>Time</em> magazine, and you can see them by following the link below.</p><p>A warning: Like much of Addario’s work, these photographs are graphic, and disturbing. More sensitive viewers might be haunted, as I was, by the images of a young woman who struggles to give birth and ultimately dies.</p><p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1993805,00.html">Related: Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone: The Story of Mama</a></p><p>You can hear Addario narrate her photos in the audio excerpt above. When asked how she can deal with such troubling circumstances, Addario said that it is not her own feelings that cause her the most distress: &nbsp;</p><p style="margin-left: 40px;"><em>I’m lucky - I can leave. Most of these people are in these lives forever. Knowing that is much more difficult than that I’ve seen something traumatic. I can leave. Most people suffer lives of abuse and hardship. That’s enough to get me through anything.</em></p><p><a href="../../series/dynamic-range">Dynamic Range</a> showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Lynsey Addario spoke at an event presented by the <a href="http://www.colum.edu/Academics/Institute_for_the_Study_of_Women_and_Gender_in_the_Arts_and_Media/">Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women &amp; Gender in the Arts and Media</a> in May. Click <a href="../../story/lynsey-addario-institute-fellow-award-winning-photographer-87168">here</a> to hear the event in its entirety.</p><p>&nbsp;</p></p>Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:10:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/story/looking-through-lynsey-addario%E2%80%99s-lens-87401Global Activism: Rebuilding a village torn apart by civil warhttp://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/global-activism-rebuilding-village-torn-apart-civil-war
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<![endif]--><p>Sam Kormoi is the founder of <a href="http://www.africanhopeanddignity.org/" target="_blank">Pan African Rural Health and Social Services (PRHeSS)</a>. Sam left Sierra Leone to study medicine here in Chicago. Civil war broke out and his village was destroyed, physically and emotionally. He tells us about the organization he started to help rebuild his hometown and the rest of the country.</p><p>&nbsp;</p></p>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:51:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/global-activism-rebuilding-village-torn-apart-civil-warThe film "War Don Don" documents war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/film-war-don-don-documents-war-crimes-tribunal-sierra-leone
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/WarDonDon_SpecialCourtPeacekeepers.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>The recent documentary,&nbsp;<em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.wardondonfilm.com/">War Don Don</a>,</em> follows the trial of Issa Sesay. Sesay was a commander of the rebel group Revolutionary United Front.&nbsp; For ten years, the RUF terrorized Sierra Leone with mass killings, amputations, and forced recruitment of child soldiers. The film paints a complex picture of the tribunal&rsquo;s contribution to the historical record in Sierra Leone. Filmmaker Rebecca Richman Cohen explains how she got involved with the tribunal.</p></p>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:38:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/film-war-don-don-documents-war-crimes-tribunal-sierra-leone